April 14, 2008

Dear Colleague:  

    Exile is disaster. But it cleanses the mind and promotes fresh ways of thinking. The Babylonian exile of the Jews (586-538 BC) "forced them to develop that aspect of their religion whose validity transcended the particular Palestinian conditions and to expose the creed thus extracted to the other religious principles of the world. This meant a confrontation of ideas with ideas. We find the position fully realized in Second Isaiah, who enunciated the principle of monotheism, freed from the [place-bound] limitation of the cult of Jahweh." Israel's older prophets already hinted at a transcendent universalism, but it took uprooting for this seed to come to fruition. A similar development occurred among the Babylonians. Their empire, established in 612 BC, was short lived. In a matter of decades, it succumbed to the Persians, under whose rule the old Babylonian religion ceased to be a state cult. Decoupling religion from politics was an uprooting comparable to the territorial uprooting of Israel. One effect was that Babylonian religion had henceforth to stand on its own spiritual content alone. Freed from cultish rites, religion was "transformed into an abstract doctrine," a system of astrology that took pride in the quality of its thought. Hellenistic Greece was impressed, and so was Europe around the rim of the Mediterranean Sea at a later time. (Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion).

    Now, what happened to ancient Israel and Babylon seems to be happening to Tibet. To protesters of the Olympic Games, Tibet is a never-never land, a Shangri-la, abused by its big bad neighbor. The reality is rather different. As late as 1950, Tibet was a feudal society made up of secular and religious orders. Land everywhere belonged ultimately to the Dalai Lama, one of whose titles was "the great owner." Nobles and lamas were granted large properties. On their estate, they enjoyed the right of taxation over the peasants, the right to command their services as cultivators, construction workers, domestic servants, and skilled artisans. Nobles themselves did little work, even in administration. They had enough wealth to order fine clothes and other luxury items from Europe; their wives, with nothing to do, spent endless hours playing mahjongg. As for religion, Tibetan Buddhism (or Lamaism) included elements of earlier nature cults and of Indian Tantrism, which boasted deities and demons that demanded animal, and in the old days, human sacrifice. Images of fierce demons still glared down from temple walls—a shock to naive Western tourists. As for the monks, I do not wish to calumniate. No doubt some were exemplars of spirituality, but more, given the culture they lived in, were magician-healers, oracles, and mediums; and as such they tried to control nearly every aspect of Tibetan life. In 1951, the Chinese army moved into Tibet and set up a government that immediately carried out far-ranging land reforms and severely curtailed the power and perks of the monastic orders. Rebellion erupted in March, 1959. Tibetans feared for the Dalai Lama's safety. He escaped and established headquarters in India.

    From the viewpoint of religious enlightenment, exile has once again proved to be a blessing. In India, without political power and confronted by new ideas, the Dalai Lama became a cosmopolite, a Western-style liberal democrat, an iconoclast who discarded Tibetan practices and believes that he considered dated and superstitious. Tibetan Buddhism, once an esoteric religion confined to a bleak plateau, is now become a universal religion, a darling, in particular, of the West. Is this possible without exile? Shouldn't China be thanked?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu